Columbia University economist Jeffrey Sachs, an expert in government finance if ever there was one, offered a quick bitch slap reality check to U.S. politicians of both political parties in an appearance today on Bloomberg. This was as close to an unscripted moment as occurs on corporate media in this country — the event was live, as will quickly become apparent once you hear his attack on Democrats and Republicans alike.
The expression of incredulity on the anchor with the pink-shirt as his bubble-world view is exploded is worth the time to watch the clip alone. The female anchor, evidently with a far firmer grip on reality than her colleague, starts to mildly freak out toward the end of the interview. Embedding disabled by request, so you have to click on the link, sorry.
Click here to watch Sachs give a reality check to our current national politics.
What ever would we do without Columbia University.
At the praise Sachs is getting from a left wing blog. This is the author of Shock Therapy after all, a radical privatization scheme that profoundly altered Russia for the worse in a lot of ways. In many other ways I respect Sachs, having met him and talked with him at length about third world economic development, but it seems that in the area of macroeconomics he is hardly one to discuss how to solve the problems this country is facing.
And giving us your fascinating personal take on the abilities of Professor Sachs, might you have anything of substance to offer by way of a comment? I am sure the audience would be interested.
Everything he said on this ep of Bloomberg was correct.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v…
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p>I think that’s Timmy Geithner speaking, perhaps someone can verify.
Perhaps he’s changed his philosophy- he doesn’t seem here to be advocating “shock therapy” (which, as per Naomi Klein, I understood to mean exploiting crises in order to slash public budgets, sell off public assets, and generally transfer wealth from public treasuries to corporations or other profiteers).
e.g., in the former Soviet Union, unfettering the invisible hand so as to rapidly create a capitalist economy. With a dose of vicarious tough love from the practitioners.
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p>Of course what you get is a sort of authoritarian mafiya kleptocracy, predictably enough.
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p>Klein’s analysis is spot on but not what Sachs would say.
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p>I have to say at this point I am inclined to cheer when people actually change their tune in response to reality, whatever they once said. But I suppose Sachs would rate the former SU as a success story.
in one comment. What are they teaching you out in Chicago?
According to the OED
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p>an attempt to link the validity of a premise to a characteristic or belief of the person advocating the premise. A logical fallacy
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p>I am not saying Sachs was wrong on Russia thus he is wrong on the US, instead I am saying that Sachs has a record of advocating policies that are starkly different to the ones he is advocating here. The lack of success of those policies is certainly food for thought. The lack of intellectual consistency is another. For a Reaganomics spouting free trader like Krugman to become a militant Keynesian, or for a shock therapy of radical privatization like Sachs to now advocate government intervention sheds some light on the validity of their previous ideas and the suddenness and sincerity of their conversion. It is also important to note that Sachs theories had real world consequences and devastated a nation and its public sector. That record should put his current prescriptions at question. Would we listen to Donald Rumsfeld on Afghanistan if he suddenly preached what we wanted to hear? Does that make him any more credible than a consistent critic like Bacevich? Does Tom Friedman have any credibility left on global economic issues or mid east foreign policy when every one of his ideas and his predictions were wrong? As a trained historian at Chicago I was taught to look for and examine important historical patterns and look for causality and Sachs certainly has lost a lot of credibility in my book. That said, I was giving him credit for other ideas that I do think make sense, particularly on African development, and reiterating that he was a personally gracious person and compelling speaker. The fact that I am open to him being right on some issues and have nothing against him personally, is diametrically opposed to what an ad hominem attack would be.
Then again, in fairness, perhaps he isn’t taught at the University of Chicago.
We have plenty of progressive economists, Austin Goolsbee for one, Charlie Wheelan ran for Rahm’s seat and had a fairly progressive platform, one of the few courageous enough to call for a true carbon tax over cap and trade, Leavitt, similarly has fairly progressive views on most issue, and a public policy professor of mine Jim Leitzel is also fairly progressive and a big Sachs critic and current adviser to the Ukrainian government to clean up his mess. And Keynesian economics is a cornerstone of macroeconomics and is still taught here as it as any any Econ Dept, by Allen Sanderson in particularly, who is usually pro-labor, at least when it comes to sports economy which is his specialty. Also I was a History major so I can’t be held responsible for the few Friedman worshiping colleagues I encountered.
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p>And Krugman is a fairly recent convert, if you read what he wrote prior to 2000 and what he won his first Nobel prize for you would know that his theories on global pricing are fairly anti-regulatory, pro-free trade, neo-liberal public policy prescriptions. He realized he could make far more money by bitching about Bush and Obama and being a hack. If you want a Keynesian who deserves respect for being a serious academic and scholar look no further than Joseph Stiglitz and his department at Columbia. Sachs by the way is not of his school.
when you question the validity of what he’s saying based on what he thought in the past. You imply this, rather than state it explicitly.
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p>Then you suggest that a particular economist would not be welcome on BMG because he once supported what you and I agree was a catastrophic policy. He wasn’t alone in that, however.
The particular ad hominem attack I accused you of is called Ad Hominem Tu Quoque:
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This would be true if A’s past actions were unrelated to X. In this case they are incredibly linked, in fact A’s past actions are his opinions on X, in this case, his opinions on how macroeconomic theory works and how states should govern their economies. If Sachs was pro-Iraq War and I said the fact that he was wrong on Iraq makes him wrong on the deficit, than your claim has a point. Instead he is being presented by Bob Neer as this unimpeachable economic expert on how states should spend their money and govern their economies, and the fact that Russia and the former Soviet Union, around 15 or 16 states, were advised on the same subject and went down the economic toilet is reason for concern. But perhaps we can conclude that a broken clock is right twice a day. Even then, Sachs shouldn’t get credit since he is jumping on a popular bandwagon being sounded by a variety of economists across the political spectrum. Stiglitz also came to Chicago and made this argument a year and a half ago, so he should get far more credit than Sachs.
You have completely, totally missed the point of the comment you’re responding to.
That is explicitly contrary to the explanation given:
excuse for dismissing an actual argument that people don’t often recognize it as wrong.
Like Maggie Thatcher and Daniel Ortega, both belive(d) in a mixed economy.
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p>Four peas in a pod, all right.
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p>Talk about logical fallacy.
Ortega as a full on communist believed in a centralized state controlled economy, he might be a social democrat now but in a contemporary setting he was not. And a ‘mixed economy’ is such a broad definition as to be meaningless.
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p>In this case Sachs has a record advising states how to spend their money and divy up their assets, its not a good record, thus his opinion today ON THE SAME SUBJECT HE FAILED ON is incredibly relevant to this discussion and not erroneous at all.
Obama does not have to raise “a billion;” he raised about $250 million in 2008, shattering all previous records. Plus he did it with a lot of small donors — another record.
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p>But Sachs’s main message seems correct to me. Neither party is really addressing the need to restructure the budget.
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p>I suppose the question for us is, how comfortable are we having this discussion? (Not this thread, the larger, public discussion.) It’s far broader than repealing tax cuts for the rich, though that would help. Are we willing to cut entitlements epending, or defense?
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but it takes far too many small donors to add up to a large donor. 74% of donors gave more than $200, and btw, the total was $450M as of Aug 31 [and I assume that also includes 2007 fund raising].
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p>It seems to me, CU not withstanding, that one way to deal with this is to lower the contribution limit to, say, $1000. This would mitigate though not eliminate the impact of big money/small money. After all, a fund raiser with 100 people writing $1000 checks is worth a heck of a lot more than a backyard BBQ with 200 people donating $25 each.
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p>I think that lots of Americans are willing to cut defense — where it gets voter tough is domestic base cutting and major programs cutting. I’d like to see the USMil start to reduce the number of contractors and make up with it using their excess soldiers. Effectively reduce the budget without reducing the number of soldiers. As for entitlements, we don’t have to cut them. Raising revenue is a perfectly appropriate way to deal with shortfalls.
a little north of both your figures: $664m
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p>http://query.nictusa.com/cgi-b…
That only includes money direct to his campaign, right? Add in DNC money and PAC money and it’s quite a bit more that was actually raised for the overall campaign. A billion is a conservative estimate for total fundraising in 2012, especially post-Citizens United.
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p>I agree, JimC, that the larger point is bigger. I don’t think the public is ready to be adults about the budget. Tax cuts, defense, and entitlement programs are all sacred cows that no one wants to touch. Messing only with discretionary spending is embarrassing.
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p>I think many on BMG are ready for the discussion, but we’re in the minority.
$200 million there, and pretty soon …
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p>I would defend the public on this. It’s perfectly acceptable and understandable that people aren’t willing to discuss cutting benefits and other unpleasant topics.
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p>But every candidate, for every office, talks about being willing to lead and make tough choices.
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p>Obama has essentially said, I’m willing to talk about it, but I’m not going alone. Fair enough.
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p>Who goes now? Boehner? Reid? Pelosi?
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Social Security is an insurance program with its own budget. It is not an entitlement program. You or your dependents don’t collect anything unless you have paid in.
I guess that would be true, if benefits were paid in SSA scrip rather than dollars.
I don’t understand your comment.
is US government bonds. No cash. So, the only way for Social Security to pay benefits is either from current collections, or by repayment of the bonds.
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p>So, yes, Social Security is not “on the budget” as such; it does not have any ability to pay benefits unless the government can pay off (or refinance) those bonds.
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p>Which means it is on the budget, in the form of interest and principal payments on debt.
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p>The social security trust fund is thus a part of the problem, not a solution to it.
The government has borrowed against the trust fund in the same manner that it borrows against you or the Chinese when you or China buy a treasury bill. T-bills are considered to be some of the very safest investments. If they were considered to be riskier, the interest they pay would be higher relative to other investments.
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p>The government has as much right to default on its loan from SS as it has to default on your T-bill. By your logic, if you own any T-bills (directly or indirectly), you are part of the problem.
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p>You’re right in that the trust fund is not a solution to the deficit. It should not be part of that calculation either. SS has for a long time, if not since inception, been set up with its own separate financing.
As MJ explains. But just to extend it a bit, by this definition USD cash is somehow not real “money” since it is backed by the government.
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p>What would be real money, CMD? Only gold, perhaps. Or maybe … a bond issued by a big corporation?
I’d love to see analysis of how much of the federal budget… not just discretionary spending but entitlement spending too… goes fairly directly toward private, for-profit entities. How much subsidy, in the name of the efficiency/superiority of the private sector, do our tax dollars provide to private enterprise?
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p>My guess is that the Bloomberg hothead who recoils at the size of the government spending would blush at such a figure.
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p>I think instead of falling into a knee-jerk defense of government spending on entitlements, we need desperately to get our hands on more and better information on the reality of WHERE our money is going and WHY. Sachs and stomv hit on some of both… but do automatically think that all federal healthcare spending is justifiable on its merits? Or do we suspect, or even know, that we are padding the pockets of health industry profiteers the same way we’re padding the pockets of profiteers in all sectors, funding them to do business contrary to the public good? This Death & Taxes poster gives a good look at the discretionary budget, but I’d like to know more.
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p>I don’t have an ideological aversion to subsidizing any and all enterprise… but I do when there’s no oversight, transparency, or accountability, and when our system of government has us held hostage to private interests.
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p>To answer Sach’s most important question, I think we DO need an Egypt of our own.
One needs to look no further than the sacred cows of Defense spending, Medicaid, and Medicare to find direct government subsidization of industry. Or farm subsidies, or oil and energy subsidies, or steel tariffs, or a host of areas where the government favors the politically connected over what is efficient and makes sense. It was the Republicans who decided to buy prescription drugs for every senior citizen, regardless of their need and ability to pay, and at highly inflated market rates. Seeing as the Republicans are directly funded by the corporations they subsidize they will never turn against their benefactors, benefactors that are increasingly the Democrats benefactors as well. Clean elections would be a government expansion and intrusion that would likely decrease the budget significantly since it would level the playing field and ensure that the only stakeholders are the American people, as the Constitution and the founders would want it to be, instead of the special interests.
Why does it seem sometimes you bend over backwards to find some fault or flaw on the progressive side to match whatever might be on the other side? Those two programs are entitlements and separately funded. They do not contribute to the deficit in the operating budget.
Can we all agree that Clean Elections would dramatically cut the corruption tax we’re paying? Are progressives going to reflexively demand to keep paying corruption taxes because taxes=good?
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p>My point is that this debate about “entitlements” is misplaced… and it is the politically connected who are making off like bandits with OUR money and not only not serving the public interest, but quite clearly subverting it.
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p>I think we’ve allowed ourselves to let government get so big, the system so complex, that we have no fucking clue what’s going on behind the curtain and now we’re not even interested in finding out. Wikileaks has started to peel back the curtain a bit and we don’t like what we see. Democrats and Republicans collude to roll back our freedoms, shift the tax burden to the struggling masses, shift our spending towards war, extraction, exploitation, and get-rich-quick schemes, and throw inconceivable and unsustainable debt burdens — economic and ecological alike — onto the backs of our kids… and the American people are gonna sit there and take it like and refuse to wise up.
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p>I don’t agree with Sachs across the board, but I love when people of his stature are willing to say things to wake people up from continued delusion. Obama, like Bush before him, and like Clinton before him, and Bush before him, is serving the elites. Pretending otherwise is not helpful to extracting ourselves from this gigantic mess we’re in.
Medicare at least, like SS, is funded by separately withheld payroll taxes. I think I’m right there with you in terms of skewed corporate benefits, but I’m not quite sure how most of what you said is relevant to my immediately previous comment.
The overall debt is the problem. The deficit in the operating budget is something makes the problem worse, as is the future cost of entitlement programs.
We’ve had a national debt since the country was founded. It’s never going to get paid off, and maybe it shouldn’t be. In any event, the government will just print money to pay it down, and so long as that doesn’t produce huge inflation, no problem. At the moment, there is no sign of inflation. If there is, that might be a time to worry about the debt.
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p>Now, I agree that there are arguments against too much debt, but they don’t seem like our biggest problem in 2011.
Bob, may I ask what meaning you intended by the bitch slap reference?
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p>I’m of the Josh Marshall school, where the term, despite its offensiveness, accurately describes the generally Republican strategy of portraying a Democratic candidate as weak and incapable of defending himself (John Kerry, Mike Dukakis):
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p>That definition seems inapplicable to this Sachs/Bloomberg exchange. I hope the term doesn’t gain widespread use as a desciption of vigorous substantive debate. Gratuitous misogyny won’t help.
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p>Thanks.
In general, the current #1 definition on Urban Dictionary, submitted in 2002, is also my understanding of the term:
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p>The sardonic overnote comes from using slang to describe one of the most important debates in the country.
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p>I wasn’t aware of any partisan connotation to the term, and still don’t think that is representative of its general usage, although thanks for the link to Marshall’s interesting interpretation.
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p>I do agree, however, on reflection, that the term is misogynistic in origin, and adds less than it takes away in this kind of context, even if scratched out with a line through it. “Counting coup” from now on!
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p>Thanks for the rhetoric check. 🙂
I’m partial to the phrase “a two by four upside the head”. It conveys a similarly graphic message without the misogynistic overtones.
… we used to call it “a clue by four upside the head”
Thanks for posting, Bob.
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p>A reminder that going only half-as-far into the ditch is still going into the ditch.
The Democrats have an opening here if they can adopt s more sophisticated approach. The Republicans won the 2010 elections as the party of growth. Since then their rhetoric has turned towards being the party of austerity as Sachs points out.
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p>The mental adjustment has to be made to distinguish between a tax policy that encourages widespread growth and investment (not just in faddish industries like green energy, but across the board) and a tax policy which encourages growth but doesn’t collect enough income taxes to pay for popular services (ie the Bush Tax Cuts).
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p>Right now Obama is austerity-light. One percent more of yearly growth in the US economy would solve our fiscal crisis. Obama has the chance to seize that solution, but he is weighed down by anti-growth forces within his own party, who don’t want people buying houses, don’t want them buying cars, don’t want them having children, don’t want them having fun, trying to convince the country that this is “the new normal”.
What it means is lower taxes for some utopian economic end.
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p>Austerity will not lead to growth neither will tax cuts. Tax cuts can only create demand when the economy is on sure footing, everyone isn’t over-leveraged, and there aren’t so many unemployed. Fiscal austerity by the government will just suppress demand more.
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p>Sachs is right. People are going to wake up from the screwing we are taking by big business. Citizens United was a clarion call. The country-wide attacks on unions is another.
Do you really think that some big new stimulus package “to create demand” is on the table? Maybe you need a reality check. I’m not for austerity but that’s what we’re talking about. That’s because the stimulus was attempted and was deemed by voters last November to have failed.
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p>Should Obama waste the next two years throwing stimulus packages into the Congress just to see them eagerly destroyed by the Republicans in the House?
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You seemed to be suggesting that tax cuts or some sort of supply-side strategy would help the economy. It won’t. Tax cuts won’t have a stimulative effect if there is too much debt and too little demand. People might pay off their debts with tax cuts, but that’s not stimulative; deleveraging with tax cuts would just shifts the debt from individual people and businesses to the government. No growth there.
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p>Whatever Obama might have tried with a stimulus package has been well-discussed. In fact, Paul Krugman said it was too small when it was negotiated and predicted how the politics would play out. He has been proven correct.
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p>What’s left to do? Well, the unemployed and the rest of us reap the benefits of a bad economy. Obama has to pretend, though he probably thinks, that he’s done all he could do for the economy. Then he has to convince enough voters that he’s doing the best that can be done and hope that the Republican Party kowtows to the wingnuts by nominating one of them.
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…then nothing happens for two years, when you hope that everybody will be more open to your presentation. What if they are just as hostile as they were in 2010? What do the unemployed do in the meantime? In addition Obama undercuts your case by agreeing to some austerity.
the economy, or all three of us. I don’t think I’ve made a political argument or case here, just a pretty straighforward economic argument. The day I start believing in the President’s economic views is the day I think the Astros will win the World Series.
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p>Austerity means cutting spending. That’s a hedge against inflation, not a way to spur economic growth. Austerity is actually detrimental to growth because demand is low and cutting government spending will just decrease demand. Are you supporting or opposing fiscal austerity?
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p>Cutting taxes, which is the bottom-line of “tax policy,” is stimulative when there is demand for goods and services. Right now, demand is down. Individuals are in debt aren’t going to spend money when they have debt to pay down. Businesses aren’t going to hire workers or produce more if no one is buying. Both are uncertain about the future and risk averse. If this argument is valid, then cutting taxes would be a waste of money.
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p>The unemployed are screwed by the GOP’s heartlessness, the Democrats’ endemic gutlessness, and Obama’s desire to sing “Kumbaya” loud enough for the country to join in for 2012. I’m done with the coulda, woulda, shoulda arguments for a stimulus. The time has passed. If I’m right, there’s nothing to do but weather what will likely be a long storm with a lot of people just trying to stay above water. Many will drown.
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while correct, is also the reason that stimulus isn’t going to accomplish much.
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p>Yes, government buys some stuff, and thereby increases demand. But government cannot increase demand enough to move an economy of this size– it is like trying to move the Titanic with a canoe paddle. Stimulus, like tax cuts, must rely on the “multiplier effect” to have any success. Government buys stuff from A, A buys stuff from B, B buys from C, and so on, and in the aggregate causing far more demand than the purchase price paid to A.
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p>The problem is that we are recovering from a recession caused by a credit bubble. That means that everyone, everywhere has too much debt. So when their taxes are cut, they use the savings not to consume, but to save, by paying down debt. Likewise the income made by A when the government purchases things from A– A doesn’t buy from B, it pays down debt. Until the aggregate debt load is paid down, the multiplier effect is severely diminished if it exists at all, for either tax cuts or stimulus spending.
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p>That is why Japan, which tried for nearly 20 years to stimulate its way out of its post-credit crash doldrums, failed. Indeed, it made things worse because now it has an unmanageable government debt, in addition to anemic growth.
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p>At some point we have to recognize that there may not be much that the government can do to improve the economy other than wait. Everything it does attempt– stimulus or tax cuts– probably makes the situation worse over the long term.
disagree on the value of the stimulus.
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p>Additional stimulus would put people back to work, which is good for the unemployed, the economy, and tax revenue. Employed people certainly exert more demand than the unemployed.
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p>Stimulus on infrastructure would also help states deal with the addressing our infrastructure needs, which we states can’t address very well at the moment.
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p>You may be right about being able to do a enough of a fiscal stimulus to get us out of our recession, but the ARRA is believed to have contributed a 3% increase to the GDP. Aggregate debt will have to come down for a complete recovery, but what would pay it off that debt more quickly, humanely, and efficiently: businesses and employees earning money and paying taxes or a sluggish economy with high unemployment? As Paul Krugman wrote, “Spending more on recovery will lead to a stronger economy, both now and in the future-and a stronger economy means more government revenue.”
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p>There is evidently little agreement about Japan’s problems stimulating itself out of its deflationary trap. Krugman, who studied the country carefully and in depth, argues somewhere that stimulus came too late and was misapplied (thus reducing the multiplier effect). Adam Posen, another economist who has closely studied Japan, also blames the Japanese government for raising taxes too soon in its recovery. There seem to be lessons to learn from Japan, but I’m not sure eschewing economic stimulus is one of those lessons.
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p>Thanks for your comment, I’ve been reading and writing for an hour and a half because you brought up things I didn’t have a read answer for.
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Your Krugman link isn’t to Krugman.
It was at Crooks & Liars.
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p>http://crooksandliars.com/susi…
Certainly this will upset the American Merchants of Death. Imagine a government wanting to buy food for the poor over bright shiny American made weapons! Never happen here. Time for Iraqi regime change again.
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p>We have to accentuate the positive part of Mr. Sachs talk. We’re the lesser of two evils.
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p>Hooray! Vote the lesser evil.
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p>“This is an impressive crowd: the Have’s and Have-more’s. Some people call you the elites. I call you my base.” –George W. Bush
The important message is that we don’t have a real two-party system. So here’s what I want to know: Will the BMG toe the party line for Obama as you did for Patrick? Will you play “bogeyman politics” and scare the “progressive” lemmings into voting for whoever is not a card-carrying (as opposed to de facto) Republican? How many more cycles of “the lesser of two evils” will it take for you to wake up? How can we get a real democracy? Where is our Liberation Square (probably controlled now by corporate/plutocratic donors)? What would we ask for, since we already have “elections”? Our dictators were more clever — instead of brute force, they used the same thirty years to create a hegemony — a cultural brainwashing paving the way for popular acceptance of our own destruction.
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p>Read Chris Hedges’ book, “The Death of the Liberal Class.”
What, pray tell, is “a real two-party system”?
What, pray tell, is “a real democracy”?
What, pray tell, do the quotes around your use of the word elections imply?
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p>And, just for kicks, wouldn’t “popular acceptance of our own destruction” necessarily lead to our own destruction in “a real democracy?”
A progressive party in the mix, instead of two corporate parties would help. A mainstream media that served the function of informing the public and exposing BS would also help.
I think you know the answers to your questions.
my answers clearly differ from yours. You used the words and phrases, and I’m asking what you mean by them.
This highlights again that the lameduck period “accomplishments” were Tier 2 issues and yet we all cheered. War, massive unemployment, real financial reform (e.g. break up TBTF institutions, prohibit obscene bonus and compensation systems that incentivize the wrong things, end insane injustices like ExxonMobil paying no 2009 federal income tax, offer a competitive public option or early Medicare buy-in) are Tier 1 to me. Accomplishments there we have not.
Not sure what to do that’s meaningful. What does not running like a bunch of lemmings mean? Voting Green? That would be like bringing hobbits to back you in a bar fight. No ring of power there.
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p>The fact is that we lack a critical mass of pissed off people aiming in the same direction, and a few very pissed off Lefties aren’t enough to form a revolutionary vanguard. I’m open to ideas.
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p>I read Hedges’s book on war. It was good.
It’s true; we don’t have the right leadership, and we don’t have the right followership, either; we do lack a critical mass of pissed off people wanting the same things. But I think (I hope) that’s because they don’t all have the same base of information. They’ve been brainwashed and distracted and divided by the carefully orchestrated 30-year conservative disinformation campaign. And while they’re busy with all that crap, they are being turned into helpless serfs, thinking they should be grateful to their masters for crumbs.
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p>I’ve been thinking about what to do that’s meaningful.
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p>We need to cultivate a grassroots movement, to educate people about what’s happening and what the alternatives could be. We need to clean up the government; it’s so corrupt at every level and so bought out by big money and big business that it really doesn’t matter whom you vote for, or if you vote at all. We need to re-value and restore institutions and organizations that support a decent society. And then, good people will want to come back into government and leaders will be able to emerge. I know it all sounds too idealistic and impossible — but who’d have thought the country could be taken over by people who only care about the richest 5% of the population. They put their mind to it, and they did it. We have to put our mind to it.
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p>Read the new Nader book, “Only the Super-Rich Can Save Us!”
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p>We have two years to get a grip. We have to expose what the Republicans are doing, how the Democrats are failing us. We really have to stop thinking it’ll all be ok, because we have a democracy, and our elected officials will not let us perish. It won’t, and we don’t, and they will; they don’t care about us at all. And people have to understand just how bad it will get if we don’t make some radical changes.
Who do you think BMG should have supported in the two elections you reference?
This is not an ad for the Green Party. I don’t care WHOM BMG supports; I care WHAT you support. If you don’t want to support candidates that advocate for the right things (yes, like Jill Stein), then at least you should be demanding that the candidates you do support DO the right things. Democrats know they’ve got the progressives (or whatever this position is called) in the bag, so they pander to the conservative side.
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p>Deval and Barack have failed us. In fact, I think what happened is that they simply were never what they let us believe they were. We were snookered. Admit it. ADMIT IT. Tell them. And if they still don’t listen, we need A THIRD PARTY, OR NO DAMN PARTY AT ALL. Voting not-Republican is not going to work.
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p>Obama praised Reagan and still parrots the stupid economic ideas of the right. Patrick said his hero is Michael Bloomberg. What do they have to do to make us look elsewhere?
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p>Ralph Nader’s book, “Only the Super-Rich Can Save Us!” starts to outline WHAT we should try to make happen here. The first thing is to take the money out of politics; as long as plutocrats and corporations buy our politicians, we’re going nowhere.
Aren’t you answering your own question here. With respect, what has Ralph Nader accomplished in politics? He got George W. Bush elected, that’s it.
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p>I’m on your side, but as Obama has rightly said, we have to live in the world as it is, not as we wish it to be.
I think “popular acceptance of our own destruction” goes a little too far, but we certainly lack the wherewithal to DO anything about saving ourselves — our communities, our Commonwealth, our country, and our whole damn species. I don’t think we ACCEPT the fate of our destruction. And I even think that more and more people are refusing to accept it. And deep down we all want to demonstrate the courage that Egypt has manifested. But we haven’t a clue how to do it. We haven’t been squeezed hard enough. We haven’t suffered the same level of indignity. We get lost in confusion about whether we have an open society, democratic decision-making power, a free media, and constitutional protections… or whether we have the makings of a proto-fascist state, with cameras popping up everywhere, collusion between the state and the private sector, militarized police forces squelching protest, FBI repression of constitutional speech, Supreme Court fiat of corporate free speech, bought-and-paid-for politicians speaking eloquently via bought-and-paid-for media channels, etc.
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p>We lack the clarity that Egyptians had about their circumstance. We don’t even know how or why our tax dollars were funding such a dictator. Or such abuses of human rights as what we fund in the state of Israel. Or the dictators around the world that we back, or the military outposts. We simply don’t get it and don’t have the institutions — media, education, economic, political — to get it. That doesn’t mean we don’t want to. More and more people are grappling with what it all means.
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p>But I think your question — WHERE IS OUR LIBERATION SQUARE — is the pertinent one. Can we even dream of taking matters into our own hands as the Egyptian people have? And if so, what then?
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p>The only ones among us with a fire in the belly remotely close to what the Egyptians felt are the worst of the Tea Party extremists. I can envision them rising up, but not in such a peaceful manner, should their numbers increase to the point at which a critical mass is achieved. The rest of the U.S. is too complacent, too intellectually lazy and incurious to care all that much. Americans are “free” so long as they are able to exercise their ability to make meaningless choices.
does represent anger at government, but the fulfillment of their program, if that incoherent jumble can be called a program, would double down on what’s happening.
When thousands of war protesters show up in Washington, the media is silent. When a Tea Party gathering gets 100 people, the media fall over themselves to cover it.
the billionaires funding their rallies, and media like Fox promoting and even organizing them.
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p>i think 95% of what passes for political discourse in this country is a distraction from the real issues, and that’s why Sachs’ words stand out so strongly.
If we do more than peacefully gather, i.e. if we peacefully March, Block Traffic & Disrupt, then we may put our job in peril (those of us who have one).
People in Wisconsin, particularly public employees, are pretty riled up right now.
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p>This might be a one-time thing, but it could also end up as an inspiration to others (no matter how this particular bill pans out).
I read Commonwealth and To End Poverty and he has changes his focus from the guy who went to Chile and Poland. He is a deep thinker and valuable asset to the discussions of poverty, disease, climate change and energy. I was delighted to see the video, but not surprised at his comments.
Thanks for putting that up, Bob. I agree with everything he says.
I just don’t get it. I don’t understand what people think the end-game will look like. Do most people really believe that intense concentration of wealth is a good thing for the country? Do they think that things would be better off if 95% of the income is earned by 0.1% of the population?
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p>If they can recognize that this would make for a very bad economy, then why do people stick to their free-market dogmas even though we’re very clearly marching to that end-game?
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p>Are people just so completely bamboozled by propaganda that they think that the psychotic accumulation of wealth — light years beyond what anyone could ever need — is a good thing?
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p>I can respect that most people don’t want everyone to earn the same — neither do I. However, there is simply no reason for someone (like 24 hedge fund managers) to earn more than a billion dollars in a single year or for people to accumulate have tens of billions of dollars in wealth. It is unlikely they can spend that sum on things they will use.
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p>In fact, from an economic standpoint, that much in profit and wealth should be a signal of inefficiencies protected by some kind of artificial barrier and buttressed by an unequal opportunity — because if someone like Bill Gates is able to earn many billions of dollars, he does not have credible competition since credible competition should drive down profits to close to zero. Gates (and I don’t fault him, since he understands that unequal wealth is bad) earned his money based on his smarts, but also based on US laws that prevented people from competing with him and a justice department that did not break up the monopoly that forms in a marketplace where conformity is desirable and variety is a detriment.
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p>And are people really so blind that they can’t see the connection here? We cut taxes on the wealthy, and then declare that we must cut services for the middle class and poor due to a lack of money in the budget? Are people really OK with this?
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p>I had a conversation with my aunt on this issue. She insisted that the best tax would be one where everyone paid the same rate, because “that would be fair”. She is virtually living in poverty, subsiding on Social Security – yet I guess she doesn’t believe that Warren Buffet spends more on a hotel room in a single night than she earns in a year, and that increasing his taxes will only affect his investments, not his contribution to the Main Street economy.
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p>I suppose the way to reach someone like that would be to suggest that everyone pay a flat sum — after all, why should Warren Buffet pay more tax in dollars than her? She probably uses more government services than he does, after all, her kids went to public school, she uses public transportation, and she walks on public sidewalks. If she can appreciate that Buffet should pay more in pure dollars because he can afford to, she should be able to get past the idea that him paying a higher rate is no less fair, and that he can still afford to.
Indeed.
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p>We have no free market economy. That would be where all have equal access to the market. We have an economy of pull. Those that have power over government politicians and administrators have the power to control media, economy and military. Does anyone doubt that the new push on Internet controls is to enhance the position of media and to thwart Egyptian style demonstrator communication?
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p>If we wanted socialism, we got it. It’s just the targets of the benefits turned out to be the wealthy rather than the poor. We’re hardly the first to be lured to that trap.
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p>The tax code is a perfect example. A progressive rate that increases as income increases. How lovely. But the politicians exempt certain income for certain wealthy classes. And the wealthy can put their wealth in tax free foundations that earn income for generations. I’m reminded of the shell game that punks used to play on the Common years ago with out-of-towners. The suckers can’t win when the dealers make up the rules. Wouldn’t a flat rate without exemption be hardest on the wealthy? Most consider the flat-rate sales tax just. How many wealthy individuals pay less federal taxes than your aunt? Corporations write the tax code and other laws. Our elected vote on them as required.
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p>We serve only as the cows awaiting the milking or the slaughter. Oh well, we get to elect the farmer…
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p>“It’s not the money. It’s not the fame. It’s the influence.” –Clay Aiken
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I don’t think a truly flat rate would have the effect that you’re describing. Sure, it may mean that someone like Warren Buffet would finally pay the same tax rate as his secretary (assuming, of course, that capital gains aren’t exempted, which is a pretty big assumption – most plans floated [Forbes, Brownback] exempt capital gains from taxation entirely) people who earn about $25,000 and under — people who currently do not pay federal income taxes, many of which get the Earned Income Tax Credit.
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p>I don’t mean to knock Warren Buffet since he’s with me on this one, but increasing his tax rate from 17.7% of his income to maybe 25% is just not enough. He earned $46 million. Others earn billions. We need practical limits on earnings because without them the wrong incentives exist in our economy. People become too focused on short-term profits and they neglect long-term growth and investment. I can agree that we have too many special-interest exemptions in our tax code, but I don’t think that pulling the plug and going to a flat tax is the right response.
I’m sick and tired of hearing politicians, financial experts and pundits blithely reporting that “the economy” is looking strong. We need a lexicon adjustment. No longer should the term “the economy” be allowed without a clarifier as to which economy.
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p>Options:
— The Wall Street Economy vs. The Main Street Economy.
— The Finance Economy vs. The Employment Economy
— The Corporation Economy vs. The Citizen Economy
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p>In each of the above options, the first may be going swimmingly but the second is frail.
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p>Citing “The Economy” per se must be disallowed until such time that both Wall Street and Main Street, Finance and Employment track together. Quit insulting our intelligence, you talking heads.